I downloaded Nero DriveSpeed (free), and I am using it on my Windows 98 box. It slows down my CD-ROM drive, and in doing so it makes it much quieter.

I was wondering - is it possible to do the same kind of thing in DOS? In other words, is there a utility (such as a TSR for instance) which can either be run at the DOS prompt, or loaded in to DOS memory which can control the speed of your CD-ROM drive?

Plextor writers had the possibility to throttle called 'Silent Mode'. You could use their tools in Windows to set the read and write velocity. The changes were written to the burners flash memory, so it was persisted even in another PC. I use it with my Plextor Premium - throttled it down to 8x, but there's also the 4x option (http://www.plextor.be/products/premium.asp?choice=PlexWriter%20Premium) - but I don't know which other drives support it. Maybe you should ask on the http://www.cdfreaks.com/ forum - people there know virtually everything about CD-ROM drives.

There was one occasion when I ran the above command, and my CD-ROM drive speed suddenly went very fast. There was also one other occasion when the drive speed seemed to stay the same rate as it usually does, in other words - quite fast (too fast really). Other times, when I run cdbq.exe, it seems to quieten and slow the drive, which is good.

So, as a preliminary summary, the utility works, but there may be one or two bugs left perhaps?

Anyway, thanks very much for writing this very useful utility, and I very much hope to be able to aquire the version 1.0 release one day....

My optical drive is a brand new LG DVD-ROM read-only drive, 52x speed reading of CDs and I think 16? speed for DVDs. No writing allowed, just read only.

Actually, I did mean Nero DriveSpeed. I ran this utility in Win98, and it listed various speeds that my drive was capable of running at, the minimum listed was 10x speed. (I only did this to see what speeds were available - of course, I should have used Nero CD Speed instead, and I will run this soon...)

I downloaded your version 0.7 of your utility and tested it using this command line -

cdbq.exe /ide:2 /mode:1 /rate:1500

I used the game Stonekeep in "pure DOS" for testing. It seemed fine, no problems at all!

I want to do a lot more testing, and will do over the next couple of weeks.

I myself was an avid fan of Plextor. The silent function is a great thing. It exists (among others perhaps) in their 712A and 716A as well as 755A and 760A. Unfortunately, I can't give you infos for the 708A.
All these are DVD-Drives and easy (not cheap) finds on ebay.

I personally prefer the old toshiba 1612, which is also a very quiet drive imho. My Plexdrives are still serving in the first line of machines on their tour of duty. The plex premium is placed in the reserve - to valuable a unit to waste for standard operations.

I've heard great things about Plextor drives.
BTW, DBob - have you tried sending a PM to Locutus? Alternatively, is there a download repository link somewhere on the website contained in his signature?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:The TEAC CD drives also allowed you to set the speed. You simply added a switch to the device line in config.sys and you had a 4x drive!

Thanks for the info. I have a TEAC 6x speed CD-ROM drive, and it's very good. Also, I can recommend the NEC CDR-273 quad speed CD-ROM drive, for quiet operation. Avoid the 273Z model however, as they seem a bit noiser than the 273 model. You can still find them on ebay.